The head of Russia’s presidential administration has told the press that all officials, including senior managers of state corporations, must get rid of their foreign accounts and securities by July 1 this year.

“If someone has bank accounts abroad, we give them three
months to get rid of them,” Sergey Ivanov told reporters on
Tuesday at a major media conference dedicated to anti-corruption
measures.

Ivanov said that the ban on foreign accounts also concerned top
executive of Russian state corporations, such as oil giant Rosneft
and natural gas monopoly Gazprom.

In its current version the ban on foreign assets is applied to
the federal and regional government officials and parliamentarians,
the Central Bank board and corporate senior managers appointed by
the president, the government or the prosecutor general.

Apart from setting the deadline for dumping foreign assets,
Ivanov promised police protection for public servants who report
incidences of corruption. He noted that the corresponding law
provides for state measures to protect whistleblowers and also to
provide them with free legal consultations.

At the same time, Ivanov noted that authorities would not base
probes on anonymous reports.

Russia has launched a major anti-corruption campaign after the
last parliamentary and presidential polls and it has already
yielded some results. Last year President Putin sacked Defense
Minister Anatoly Serdyukov over the suspected multi-billion graft
schemes and former Agriculture Minister Skrynnik is acting as a
witness in a major embezzlement case.

Sergey Ivanov also said in the interview that 322 civil servants
were fired after auditors checked 211,000 of 1.3 million submitted
income declarations for 2011. Generals from the Emergencies
Ministry were among those fired.

The issue of foreign property has also caused several scandals
in the parliament and several MPs lost their seats. However, the
offense was not mere ownership of foreign apartments and
businesses, but a failure to mention them in their property
declarations submitted before the parliamentary elections.